Rivalry Weeks 2023

 Quick post here as most of you are arriving in Chicago today.

Here are our 2023 Rivalry Weeks (Weeks 1 & 14) Matchups, sorted by the joint ranking (14 points max):
1. Esco vs. Weissbard - 14.0 Points - The Halloween Prank Bowl VI
2. Alan vs. Levine - 13.0 Points - The Unexpected Shade Bowl III
3. Barnard vs. Kumpf - 12.5 Points - The One-Sided Rivalry Bowl III
4. (tie) Gutman vs. Marco - 12.0 Points - The Dad Bowl VI aka The Father of Two Bowl IV
4. (tie) Billy vs. Bennett - 12.0 Points - The Tag Team Bowl II (this admittedly made more sense when Marshall was still "involved" for the first one in 2018)
6. Ajay vs. Nick - 11.5 Points - The Earliest To Leave Draft Weekend Bowl
7. AGD vs. Zacherman - 11.0 Points - The AGD Filled The Survey Out Wrong Bowl

Here is the raw data:

• Despite making the Stevens Bowl last year, Bennett took the mantle of "Most Desired Rival" from Barnard, with two-time champ Weissbard also passing him in the ranks.
• Levine is unsurprisingly the Least Desired Rival, followed by AGD and Zacherman.
• The league was most split on how to rank Barnard, with most of us giving him a top 5 spot (and 4 of us putting him at the top!), while others had him much lower.
• Billy and I had the most consistent rankings, right around the middle of the pack.

See most of you tomorrow.

2023 Season Preview

 Not having a job is much more time consuming than I remember, so this post will be brief. Use it to help with your rivalry rankings, division draft, or just ignore it. As you can see, the blog design and sidebar is updated for this season. Overall winning percentage stayed relatively similar, but somehow Nick dropped from 6th to 11th after a 6-8 season due to the insane cluster around .500. As always, the fact that the top 7 teams by historical record have 5 titles, and the bottom 7 teams have 8 titles defies logic, but Alan kept that train rolling last year.

On to the more predictive stats:

Not a lot of movement here either. Levine remains head and shoulders above everyone else, Billy fell further into the abyss, and Alan won his third title despite having a lower PAA than Long. Barnard has the largest gap between his record and PAA, showing that he is truly fools gold every year. Nick and Zacherman not having a chef's coat is almost as surprising as Alan winning three times.

Division Draft Tiers:
1. Levine
2. AGD, Esco, Nick, Z, Kumpf, Marco, Weissbard (AGD and Esco have had poor showings recently, so they join the mess of teams above 0.00)
3. Gutman, Barnard, Bennett, Ajay
4. Alan, Billy (the most volatile tier possible)

And for posterity, the all-time points situation:

Fill out your Rivalry Week polls, and see you in the Windy City this weekend.